Through an innovative program called Expeditionary Logistics for the 21st Century, or eLog21, the U.S. Air Force is replacing outmoded, stove-pipe processes and disjointed IT systems with an enterprise-wide infrastructure that optimizes its supply chain.

Can you trust your software vendor with critical data and applications that are sitting in a server at a remote location? The model offers numerous advantages-and some caveats as well.

Whether to acquire supply chain solutions from a best-of-breed vendor or an enterprise resource planning vendor is still a relevant question, but the competitive landscape has changed markedly in recent years.